From the River to the Sea:

From the River to the Sea:

O. S. Hawkins

Antisemitism is on the rise all over the world. America is now following many European cities in electing Muslim mayors many of whom have been vocal about their feelings toward the Jewish state and the Jewish people. 

The evening news brings repeated videos of antisemitic protests on many of the most well known and once respected college campuses in the western world.

There is a common thread woven throughout each of these rallies. 

There are always scores of professionally printed large posters accompanied by their loud and repeated chants, “From the river to the sea…Palestine must be free!” The not so subtle implication of this message is that the state of Israel must be extinguished from the earth. 

Its present boundaries consume that land that is west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. 

Thus, these radical calls are indicating the desire is to see the total elimination and annihilation of the Jewish state with one replaced by the Palestinian population…hence their battle cry, “From the River to the Sea…Palestine will be free.”

This should come as no real surprise to anyone who has been knowledgeable of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the last many decades, especially dating back to the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. 

In fact, the very charter of the Palestinian people makes this plain. 

The Palestinian National Charter, sometimes called the Palestinian National Covenant (1968), includes several references to the complete rejection of the legitimacy of the State of Israel and in more than one place calls for its elimination as a political entity. 

It blatantly rejects a two state solution and in Article 9 states that an armed struggle is the only way to eliminate Israel.

The chant, “From the River to the Sea,” is not simply an appeal for Palestinian recognition but at its core there is the not so subtle message that there is no room for a Jewish state in our modern world and particularly one in their ancient homeland.

Evangelicals are Christians who adhere to a more literal interpretation of both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles (Old and New Testaments) believing that all scripture is divinely inspired and as Solomon proclaimed we believe that “every word of God is pure” (Proverbs 30:5). 

We hold to an eschatological hermeneutic insisting that God is still in covenant relationship with the Jewish people, especially as it relates to the land of Israel, which the Almighty has given to them as an “everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8).

Consequently, to hear that all the land of the Bible “from the river to the sea” belongs to someone other than the Jewish people is not only offensive but a direct assault on the integrity and trustworthiness of Scripture itself. 

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